Within the past seven years, 27 people have been fired from the Barbados Defence Force (BDF) for using illegal drugs.
Chief of Staff Colonel Alvin Quintyne reported to the media yesterday that the BDF had terminated the services of a number of individuals since the force started extensive internal drug testing.
“Since we started the testing with the enforcement of the [drug] policy in 2006, we would have conducted a total of about 3 000 tests and that would mean that individuals such as myself would have done the tests more than once and thus far we would terminated the services of about 27 individuals who were found with illegal substances in their system,” he said.
“They would have gone through the investigative phases and, as the force has a zero tolerance policy concerning illegal substances, if you cannot give a good reason why there are illegal drugs in your system, you are terminated from the force.”
Quintyne was speaking at the BDF’s Paragon, Christ Church headquarters after he addressed 70 recruits about to start four months of training.
He said that soldiers having illegal drugs in their systems was a serious matter; he had to be comfortable that any soldiers stationed on the street would not be a danger to themselves, colleagues, their mission, or to the public. (CA)
